That was before she was bitten by a mosquito carrying West Nile virus.

Now, the Old East Dallas resident doesn’t work and often has little energy to get through the day. She walks with a cane, has occasional tremors and suffers from short-term memory loss — all long-term effects of encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, caused by viruses such as West Nile.

McCall was among nearly 30 people who attended a meeting Saturday in Plano for survivors of West Nile virus and encephalitis. They offered a glimpse of the brutal toll the mosquito-borne virus can take on its victims.

Encephalitis Global, a nonprofit group that works to raise awareness of the disease, moved the meeting from Florida to the Dallas area after the region became the national epicenter of West Nile this year.

In Dallas County, 10 people have died of West Nile. While the deaths are publicized, West Nile survivors like McCall say the effects of the virus often go unnoticed.

“Probably looking at me, you would never know I have West Nile,” she said. “You don’t see the chronic fatigue, chronic pain or the tremors.”

McCall, 60, began suffering from extreme fatigue and a high fever in August 2008. At first, she thought she had the flu and believed she could fight it off.

“I’m a Type A that would go to work with 103 [degree fever], but I felt so awful that I didn’t even get up and go to work the whole week,” she said.

As in many West Nile cases, her doctor agreed that it was the flu and sent her home.

But when her body started going rigid and her fever wouldn’t break, McCall went to the emergency room. She slipped into a coma and spent six weeks in intensive care.

She suffered from respiratory failure and was partially paralyzed.

“I couldn’t chew, couldn’t swallow. Just think of a polio victim,” McCall said. “I can’t describe the pain that I had much less not being able to move.”

Her experiences aren’t unusual.

Saturday’s meeting originally was meant to be a support gathering, but officials decided to make it more formal and informational because of the severity of this year’s outbreak, said Becky Dennis, a board member for Encephalitis Global and an encephalitis survivor.

The goal was to give the community more insight into how the virus can affect those who survive.

“The ones who have suffered from the neuroinvasive [virus] are the ones who are going to deal with it for a while or a lifetime,” Dennis said.

As of Saturday, Dallas County had 242 reported West Nile cases. Of those, two-thirds are neuroinvasive West Nile, which can have the most lasting and damaging effects, and can lead to encephalitis.

West Nile is still relatively new to the U.S. The first cases were recorded in 1999, and the medical community has been struggling to learn about the disease ever since.

This year has been especially troubling because the large number of infections followed a two-year span with no cases. Plus, the fatality rate of neuroinvasive West Nile cases in Dallas County is relatively high at more than 4 percent, said Dr. James Luby, professor of internal medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

The virus also doesn’t affect everyone the same. Typically, those older than 50 are hit the hardest. Younger people tend to exhibit milder symptoms and get over them quickly.

Many survivors thought there is not enough focus among Dallas County officials on West Nile’s long-term effects on its victims. If officials took the virus more seriously, they say, aerial spraying on mosquitoes would have occurred sooner.

The individual health care costs of neuroinvasive cases also can be staggering, survivors said.

McCall, the 2008 survivor, said her bills have approached nearly $1 million.

“Seldom are politics ahead of the game,” Carrollton resident Fred Greene said. “This should’ve been taken care of months ago.”

Greene, a retiring assistant city manager in Denton, attended the meeting to get more information on West Nile for his wife, who was told she had the virus in late July.

She had a high fever, was vomiting and had a rash on her stomach. But Greene was most worried about his wife’s confusion.

“She couldn’t make sense of anything,” he said. During a recent hospital stay, she told a nurse she thought it was March.

After spending more than a week in the hospital and a week in a rehab facility, Greene’s wife is still struggling. She can’t walk far without fatiguing or feeling nauseated.

Watching his wife struggle makes him frustrated that the county waited so long to begin its airstrike.

Coppell resident Darla Sevieri agreed. She spent months struggling to get an accurate diagnosis of her illness. Her doctor confirmed that she had West Nile with two tests, but her case was never confirmed by Dallas County.

Sevieri said she called city offices in May to report two dead birds in her yard. She told officials that she had been diagnosed with West Nile, but she was told that the county was no longer testing dead birds.

Both Greene and Sevieri hoped the meeting would give them more information on how to heal.

McCall said that because of her illness, her Munger Place neighbors have learned to be vigilant about avoiding mosquito bites.

Though she faces ever-changing health needs, she said she tries to remain positive about her condition.

“I don’t feel like I’m 60. And AARP says 60 is the new 30,” she said. “I’m not dead. I’m walking. I’m contributing to society, and I can still use my brain and I’m mobile. The flip side of that is I’m a constant source of frustration to my family.”

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